Feedback

There’s really no argument about the fact that feedback is pretty important. It sits right at the top of the list of strategies which make the biggest impact on students’ progress. If we’re not giving students feedback on their learning then, frankly, what in God’s good name are we doing? There is nothing else which should have a higher priority in your teaching.

OK, with that off my chest, it’s important to acknowledge that there a couple of problems to be aware of. All, sadly, is not rosy in the feedback garden.

I have become determined to help shape the quality of my students writing as it is worked upon rather than relying on marking a piece and seeing the same errors time and time again. Seems obvious, but I’ve fallen out of this habit.

So I used this quick technique yesterday in order to help structure some peer assessment / critique of an ongoing writing task (in an effort to try and “feed up” at least as much as “feedback” on tasks). Year 8 students have been using their knowledge of evacuation experiences during the Second World War to write a creative diary piece which is, or should be, historically accurate. We began the lesson by asking

During our monthly TLCs at Temple Moor we have recently been focussing on student ownership of learning – alongside this the Learning Team have been working hard on designing and implementing a creative, realistic and purposeful assessment policy for the whole school and faculties.

For me the term assessment or marking can lead to a confused message – we need to focus on feedback, specifically the quality of feedback given either by teachers or by students to each other. Peer assessment is obviously an important part of feedback and as Black and William (2009) stated one of the five major strategies for effective assessment for learning is “activating students as the owners of

I travel with a heavy suitcase. Over my 35-year career as a public school teacher and educator at Expeditionary Learning, I have been obsessed with collecting student work of remarkable quality and value. I bring this work with me whenever I visit schools or present at conferences and workshops, because otherwise no one would believe me when I describe it.

The student work in my giant black suitcase is exemplary — beautiful and accurate, representative of strong content knowledge and critical thinking skills — but it’s not from “exceptional” students. It does not come from gifted and

A while ago I wrote a postreflecting on how I probably don’t structure sequences in my practice to allow students the opportunity to properly act upon feedback. I then put a plan into action and wrote a post about how I would therefore create dedicated times in my lessons for students to do something with the comments that I or their peers had given them. As a PE teacher I’m not the best at remembering to do these sorts of things so I came up with a few ideas to ensure I did. The one idea that shone through was using a process called ‘Critique’. This method of getting work analysed and unpicked sounds very similar to traditional peer or self assessment. And there are similarities. What critique does differently though is develop the process by getting the feedback and feedforward more specific and refined. It forces the feedback that

Recently, as I delved into the divisive figure John Hattie’s book Visible Learning, a thought occurred to me. In his book Hattie says ‘closing the gap between where students are and what success looks like is the most powerful way we can fast forward learning.’. The complexities of the pace of learning referred to in this statement through the phrase ’fast forward learning’ is a worrying matter to me, yet, alas, a different argument altogether from the one about how we should push pupils from their current position to a position of success. It would seem to me (as a tired-eyed and permanently perplexed NQT) that although as educators we agree learning is ongoing and spans far wider than the time allowed in our classrooms the pressure of academic requirements ensures we must look

The more I think about assessment, the more fascinating and intricate I find it. Superficially, it used to seem really straight forward; teacher tells you what to do and how to succeed, you do it and the teacher tells you how you have done. Simples. Or maybe it is having that just in time learning conversation which not only helps learners see where they are, but also where they can get to. The horizon is vast. Or maybe it is all of theses things?

I don’t think a single blog post will suffice to make my thinking clear, even to myself, so in this post, I would like to focus on feedforward. Now you may think this is a piece of jargon with which we can play bullsh*t bingo,

Over the last few weeks there have been some very thought provoking posts on AfL on various teacher blogs. Two in partcilular resonated most with me – firstly, this one from Joe Kirby and then this from Tom Boulter. Both focus on cutting out the ‘gimmicks’ that have polluted the waters of AfL in recent years and get to the nuts and bolts of what it is all about – good teaching.

They put me in mind of a quote from Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame, who when asked about how they functioned as a band, answered that they were ‘tight but loose’. Tight as a band playing together, but loose

Many schools, and departments, have been reflecting about their marking policies ever since OFSTED declared more than a healthy interest in scrutinising books. Progress over time has rightly been identified as more important than single lesson snap shots – of course, that evidence if best found in ongoing student work and the attendant formative assessments. This has combined with greater scrutiny of standards of literacy, particularly writing. I have no problem with this; as you would expect from an English teacher. I think it is of paramount importance to have the highest standards for writing across the curriculum. Unfortunately, it appears that in many schools OFSTED fear has fuelled a misguided obsessed with marking, resulting in draconian whole-school marking policies that are less about learning and more